Long Reads Of The Year: 2015

As we emerge from the clickbait age, the popularity of long form journalism (#longreads, if you're on Twitter) is soaring, with new digital companies investing in it for the first time and older publications harnessing digital media to make their features look better than ever before.

Every week on this website, we publish a selection of the five best long form features that have been published on other websites around the world.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Here is a selection of the best of the best from 2015 – feats of journalism that uncover important truths and get under the skin of remarkable people who shape the world today, or in other cases, simply tell amazing stories that otherwise would not have been heard.

In the same list, broken down by month, Esquire's editor-in-chief Alex Bilmes selects his highlights from a year commissioning work with the same aspirations.

Most Popular

Bookmark the ones that interest you, and spend some time this Christmas break absorbing more than just mince pies and sherry. Or, of course, sit back and do all three at once.

2 | In the most widely-read article ever to appear on Esquire UK, Max Olesker investigated the rise and rise of the spornosexual and spent three gruelling months in the gym to find out what being 'ripped' really feels like.

5 | Paul Kalanithi is a young surgeon with metastatic lung cancer. His letter to his baby daughter, 'Before I Go', published on Stanford Medicine Magazine, was both deeply moving and a reminder how much we take our own health for granted. Kalanithi died only weeks later aged 37.

6 | In 'Remembering My Father' Andrew O’Hagan, one of Britain’s best writers of fact and fiction (and an Esquire editor-at-large), writes movingly about his father and his battle with alcohol.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

March

7 | In this extract from his book So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, Jon Ronson investigates a peculiar case of online retribution, and asks how we arrived at a situation where the fake indignation particular to social media can have such devastating real-world consequences.

8 | Esquire editor-at-large Will Self travelled to the American deep south with his 16-year-old son in search of an authentic taste of the blues. Ostensibly a travel piece, it was really about a journey all fathers and sons will recognise.

16 | A deeply moving and difficult to read piece from US Esquire; 'The Friend' is one writer's account of losing his wife to cancer, and the best friend who gave up everything to help him get through it. By Matthew Teague.

27 | In 'The Mixed-Up Brothers of Bogota', New York Times Magazine's Susan Dominus told the remarkable story of two pairs of Colombian identical twins who were raised as two pairs of fraternal twins following a hospital mix up – and how they found each other.

29 |Esquire's Sanjiv Bhattacharya had a front row seat at the Suge Knight murder case in LA. In 'Taking The Rap', he explores how the man who was once the most powerful and feared figure in hip-hop became barely a shadow of his former self.

32 | In one of the most harrowing and enraging articles you're ever likely to read, New York Times' Rukmini Callimachi uncovered sex slavery in the Islamic State and how ISIS has 'enshrined a theology of rape'.

September

33 | In 'Murder on the Appalachian Trail', Earl Swift wrote for Outside about his encounter with a young couple who were murdered on America's most famous hiking route twenty-five years ago, and how the horrendous crime changed the way the nature thought about the outdoors forever.

38 | "Mars has always had a certain fascination for us Earthlings," wrote Game Of Thrones author George RR Marin in the Guardian, "it was one of the original planets, the Fab Five of antiquity, the “wanderers” who refused to march in step with the stars, but made their own way through the heavens." His plotted history of the red planet's presence in science fiction is a delight.

41 | In 'The Death and Life of the Great British Pub', the Guardian's Tom Lamont told the story of the Golden Lion in Camden and how it fought back against the trend of Britain's public houses closing down at an alarming rate.

42 | In 'The Strange Case of Anna Stubblefield', New York Times Magazine's Daniel Engber had the story of the woman who told the family of a severely disabled man that she could help him to communicate with the outside world, and ended up the subject of the criminal trial.

44 | Elizabeth Haysom and Jens Soering were young lovers who both ended up in jail for the brutal murder of the former's parents in 1985. All these years later, why has the case become an international cause? The New Yorker's Nathan Heller had this briliantly researched account of a astonishing story.

49 | In 'The Machiavelli of Maryland', the Guardian's Thomas Meaney profiled Edward Luttwak, the military strategist and scholar who has the ear of presidents, prime ministers and the Dalai Lama. Why do very powerful people pay vast sums for his advice?

50 | Finally, Esquire's Tim Lewis travels to the remote mangrove forests of Bangladesh where an uneasy truce exists between man and man-eater exists, to ask 'What is the Future of the Bengal Tiger?'

Sign up for the best in style, food, and culture direct to your inbox.

We will also let you know about discounts and great offers from us, tick this box if you'd rather not know about these.
Hearst Partners would like to let you know about some of their fantastic discounts, special offers, and promotions. We promise you wont be bombarded. Tick here if you would like to receive these.